ROO!

April 1st, 2012 by

There were 91 greyhounds at Friends of Greyhounds’ Dinner with the Dogs. We ended the evening with a group ROO lead by Roo-Master Darryl.

Cole, Jimbo & Jazzy Running

March 18th, 2012 by

Here is a video taken at Friends of Greyhounds of Cole, my current foster dog, with Jimbo & Jazzy.

The Final Space Shuttle Launch

July 20th, 2011 by

Here is a video of the last space shuttle launch.

I think it includes every video camera that NASA owns!

http://www.space.com/12355-shuttle-launch-glorious.html

For the best quality, be sure to watch it in full screen.

Trash Can Lady

May 17th, 2011 by

I heard some strange noises outside and this is what I saw…

My Solution to “error running shared postrotate script for ‘/var/log/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log ‘”

April 7th, 2011 by

Recently I upgraded Linux on my home server and every day I would get this email:

Subject: Anacron job 'cron.daily' on server.local

/etc/cron.daily/logrotate:
error: error running shared postrotate script for '/var/log/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log '
run-parts: /etc/cron.daily/logrotate exited with return code 1

I first examined the /etc/cron.daily/logrotate script.
There was only one executable line: /usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf

I next examined /etc/logrotate.conf and found this: include /etc/logrotate.d

logrotate.d is a directory of scripts to run.

SInce my error message was for MySQL, I examined the /etc/logrorate.d/mysql-server script.
One line in this script is
MYADMIN="/usr/bin/mysqladmin --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/debian.cnf"

I examined /etc/mysql/debian.cnf and found the cause of the error message:

user = debian-sys-maint
password = oMhAfEiEiO

It was the PASSWORD! There was a mismatch between the password in debian.cnf and the password for the debian-sys-maint user in MySQL.

Finally, I changed the password for debian-sys-maint in MySQL to the password listed in debian.cnf and the daily error message email stopped.

New Dog in the House — Lilly

March 1st, 2011 by

Lilly has a broken leg and she is being fostered until she is well.

Lilly

She has a plate in her leg that is held in place with seven screws.

My place is Lilly’s first experience with living in a real home. After a week, she discovered that she now has a name and every time I call her by name she is extremely happy.

After the vet gives her approval, Lilly will return to Friends of Greyhounds to be adopted out.

HTML 5

January 20th, 2011 by

I recently came across a website that has very good information for the programmer that is ready to transition to HTML 5. It is Dive Into HTML5.

This website is an online manuscript that introduces many of the new features available for programming in HTML 5.

My favorite HTML 5 feature is the placeholder attribute for the <input> element like this:
(Click in the text box)

The code looks like this: <input placeholder="Enter something">

It used to take a little bit of Javascript coding to get this functionality and now it is included in HTML 5.

I then went back and modified some of my HTML code to take advantage of this new feature…

Name

ZIP Code

This is the HTML 5 coding for it…

<input name="search_term" id="search_term" placeholder="Lookup Name">
<input type="radio" name="search_type" value="name" onclick="javascript:getElementById('search_term').placeholder='Lookup Name';" checked>Name
<input type="radio" name="search_type" value="zip_code" onclick="javascript:getElementById('search_term').placeholder='Lookup ZIP Code';">ZIP Code

There are many more things that you can do with a <input> element in HTML 5 and Dive Into HTML5 is a good introduction.

Improved Toenail Clippers

January 14th, 2011 by

I made a modification to my toenail clippers for my greyhounds that improved the quality of the work.

I added a small flashlight to the clippers. It is held in place with 2 nylon wire ties. To get the correct angle for the light I added 4 garden hose washers under the back of the flashlight.

This modification has improved my accuracy to clipping toenails and also reduced the chance of hitting the quick in their nails.

Darryls’ Halloween Costume

November 5th, 2010 by

Here are photos of Darryl & his Halloween costume. Its hard to see in the photos but the lights are flashing.

Darryl is dressed up as the “Fun Police”. His job is to supervise the other dogs at Friends of Greyhounds.

Clever Scam

October 1st, 2010 by

I volunteer with Friend of Greyhounds in Hialeah, Florida. Along with helping with the ex-racer greyhounds that they have up for adoption I also assist with computer, web and other information technology items for them.

We just received an email that seemed mostly harmless. It said that we just won a blogger award and gave a link their site.

When I visited their site, the first thing I noticed was the link was to a generic award. There were several choices for the size and color of the award. As you can see the “award” is very plain and generic. The site even generated the HTML code to include the award on our site.

At first glance it seemed innocent enough, but there were several things about this “award” that bothered me.

The award page was for everybody. Nothing was passed with the link to their site to indicate who we were.

The real problem was with the HTML code they generated to include this award in our website. The HTML code they wanted me to add to our site had 5 links to their website.

At this point I understood what their motive was in choosing us for an award. By having us add 5 links in our website to their website we were providing information to trick the search engines into giving them a higher score in search results. Search engines would determine that their website was more popular that it really was and would rank them closer to the top in search results.

We did not accept this award based on one simple criteria, “If it doesn’t help get out dogs, don’t bother.”